


Share and Share Alike

by dracoqueen22



Series: Taste Test [2]
Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, Plug and Play, Tactile, interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:19:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knock Out's been telling tales and Starscream intends to test their authenticity. Breakdown's in it for the free high grade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Share and Share Alike

**Author's Note:**

> This is set sometime after Operation: Breakdown but before Partners.

It's a slag job but someone's gotta do it. And since Knock Out finds himself “busy” without notice, Airachnid's more than useless, and no one else is stepping up, Breakdown has become the only mech left.  
  
No, it's not the most glamorous duty in the world. But it's a job that has to be done and so he does it. Sure, kicking some Autobot aft is way more exciting, but he can't do that every solar cycle or eventually he'd run out of aft to blast.  
  
So... paperwork.  
  
Lots and lots of paperwork. Fun paperwork. Not so fun paperwork. Stacks and stacks of datapads needing sorting, filing, confirming, blah, blah, blah.  
  
It wouldn't be so bad, Breakdown muses, but Starscream's penmanship is atrocious, Knock Out never turns in his reports on time, and Airachnid doesn't bother to submit hers at all. Lord Megatron, of course, doesn't bother with any kind of documentation. Soundwave's the only one he can count on to be precise and punctual, but that mech gives Breakdown the shivers so he just takes those reports and makes himself scarce.  
  
There's just something not right about a mech that doesn't talk and hides behind a faceplate. And the way he lets those mini-cons crawl all over him? Breakdown shudders. Nope. Not right at all.  
  
Amusingly, out of the whole lot, the Vehicons are the ones Breakdown can rely upon the most. They turn in their reports like clockwork, utilize clear and concise definitions, and sometimes, a couple of them stick around to help him sort through the madness. Good guys, they are. Rotten luck to not have any sparks though.  
  
Breakdown taps in his approval code on one datapad, sets it in his finished stack, and reaches for the next. There's more to be sorted than he's managed to file away. Ah, busy, busy. A soldier's work is never done.  
  
He scans the originator of the report, Starscream's identifying glyph scrawled across the top. And well, not much else. Breakdown cycles down his optic, tilting the datapad to the left and right. Nope, that's not making it any clearer. What the frag is the Seeker blathering on about?  
  
He drums his fingers across the tabletop. To comm or not to comm, that is the question.  
  
On the one hand, these datapads aren't going to sort themselves. On the other hand... Starscream. After serving with the mech these short few weeks, Breakdown still isn't sure who natters on more, Knock Out or Starscream. Both of them talk, talk, talk. Don't know the value of being quiet at all.  
  
The door to the abysmally small records room swooshes open in the middle of his internal debate and Unicron walks in. Well, close enough anyway. It's Starscream.  
  
“I am not a mindless drone,” the aerial mutters, laboring under a stack of datapads that make Breakdown's shoulders sink just looking at them. “Starscream, carry this. Starscream, fetch that. Yes, Mighty Megatron. However, I might serve you.” He makes a fair approximation of a snort, vocalizer gears grinding together obnoxiously.  
  
With a noisy exvent, Starscream drops the datapads onto the desk in front of Breakdown, and then performs a double-take.  
  
“Breakdown!” he says, optics glancing around. “What the frag are you doing here?”  
  
He lifts an orbital ridge. “Working.”  
  
“Working. Hah.” Starscream makes a disdainful noise and then slaps on indignation like it's a medal he can wear proudly. “At least someone is making themselves useful around here.” He rises up on his pedes, peering around the tiny room. “Your partner isn't here?”  
  
Breakdown nudges aside the datapads Starscream brought and lifts the one he can't comprehend. “Not attached at the hip. Care to translate?”  
  
“Translate?” Starscream takes the datapad, squints at it, turns it upside down and from side to side. “Hmm. I'll send you another copy.” It blinks away into subspace.  
  
Breakdown smirks. Not even Starcream can ready his own scrawling. Wait until he tells Knock Out. The medic'll get a kick out of it.  
  
He turns to the next datapad in his stack, one submitted by a Vehicon. Thank Primus. It's legible, accurate, and ready to be filed. Breakdown signs off on it, turns to file it, and feels a stare focused on his backstrut. What the frag?  
  
He glances over his shoulder. “Did you need something else?”  
  
Starscream is staring at him, something in his optics that concerns Breakdown. It's not unlike the sort of look a predator gives prey. “I hear rumors, Breakdown.”  
  
He files the datapad, slams the drawer shut, and turns fully toward the aerial. “What kind of rumor?” He's suspicious, and rightly so. Starscream's not planning on calling out his favor right now, is he?  
  
Starscream folds his arms behind his back, clasping his hands. Aiming for noncommittal and landing somewhere around curious instead. “I've been reasonably informed that you are a mech with skills.”  
  
“Skills?” He's starting to feel as dumb as he sounds. What the frag is Starscream jabbering on about now? He squints. “You needing someone taken out or something? Because I'm good for that. Unless it's Lord Megatron.” Not opening that can of alloygators. No sir, no sir.  
  
Starscream laughs, a deliberate, dismissing vocalization that's fake, fake, fake. “Not quite.” Over his shoulders, his wings flick. First one then the other. “These skills, I'm told, are relegated to the berth.”  
  
Oh.  
  
Breakdown reboots his audials.  
  
 _Oh_. He grins. Reasonably informed? Heh. Breakdown's not stupid or blind, even with only one optic. He's seen and heard about Starscream's little tryst with Knock Out. Have the two been gossiping?  
  
“What about them?” he asks, processor completing the circuit from one thought to the next. Easy to see where Starscream's going with this, but he wants to see if the aerial's actually going to come right out and ask or dither around some more.  
  
Irritation flashes over Starscream's faceplate. “Well, unless your partner has you on a leash, I'm suggesting a demonstration.”  
  
Apparently, dithering around is the game of choice for today.  
  
Breakdown tilts his helm. “I don't like aerials.” It's a lie, of course. The Decepticons are, by a large majority, aerials. If he ignored them all, he'd only have Knock Out to interface. And Knock Out, while attractive and up for a frag anytime and anywhere, starts to grate on a mech's patience after awhile. Selfish mech that he is.  
  
“Neither does Knock Out.”  
  
“He doesn't count.”  
  
Starscream laughs. “Why not?”  
  
Breakdown leans forward, planting his hands on his desk. “Because he'll frag anything with a spark pulse.” He pauses, thinking of the Vehicon-pile he caught Knock Out in a month or so ago. “And maybe a few without it.”  
  
Starscream's wings do that little flutter again. Someone, somewhere, must have told him how attractive the little twitches were. It's certainly working for Breakdown. “You're not at all curious?”  
  
Of course he is.  
  
“What if I say no?”  
  
Starscream makes a vague gesture. “Then I walk away and this conversation never happened.” His optics rake Breakdown from his helm on down. “But that's not what you want is it?”  
  
Even leaning like this, Breakdown is still taller than Starscream. It's not hard to loom over the slimmer aerial. “I don't play nice,” he warns.  
  
“I'm not a nice mech,” Starscream retorts with a dark scarlet flash of his optics.  
  
Breakdown smirks, a shiver of heat skipping down his backstrut. “Good. I don't want to get slagged for a little denting.” Not that he thinks Megatron would care, but some of the Vehicons are oddly protective of the cowardly Seeker and somewhere in the universe is a collection of Seeker-kin that wouldn't attack Megatron for Starscream's sake, but would have no trouble taking out a medic's assistant.  
  
Starscream's energy field flares with invitation. “Then we agree. This evening. I'll bring the high grade.”  
  
Mech sure knows how to sweeten the deal.  
  
“I'll be there.”  
  
Starscream whirls on a turbine and is out the door, taking his tantalizing energy field with him. Breakdown exvents and drops down into his chair, no longer interested in sorting and categorizing.  
  
Huh. Apparently, when he told Knock Out to share, the mech had taken him seriously. What are friends for?  
  


o0o0o

  
He might be more than a little overcharged right now. Maybe. This Kaon blend has a kick to it, one that trickles down into his engine and makes his whole frame thrum. Starscream sucks down another half-cube, swirling it around and around, admiring the Decepticon purple shade of it.  
  
It's almost a shame he'd agreed to share.  
  
The minutes tick by. Starscream waits on bolts and brackets, perched on a stool, watching his door. Waiting for the inevitable ping. What the frag is he thinking, taking another grounder to his berth? Clearly, Megatron's last beating had knocked a few of his processing circuits loose.  
  
He drinks the rest of the high grade and contemplates having another. His thoughts are already starting to string together in a confusing tangle. Maybe that's for the best. Blame it on the high grade.  
  
The door pings. Starscream sends the command for it to open as he leaps up from the stool, overcharge licking over his plating in visible arcs of electricity. He's jittery from it.  
  
Breakdown lumbers into the room like the giant soldier that he is, making Starscream's quarters seem even smaller than they are. Lord Megatron is the only mech on this ship larger than Breakdown and suddenly, the size difference seems all the more obvious.  
  
The tingle on Starscream's backstrut flares into a wave of heat from helm to pede.  
  
“Breakdown,” he greets with a wobbly smirk. “Have a seat.”  
  
Understandably suspicious, Breakdown maps out Starscream's quarters with one optic before he takes the chair and drops down into it. Heavily. Looking incredibly massive compared to that tiny, tiny piece of furniture.  
  
Starscream's cooling fans click on with a quiet whirr.  
  
I like big mechs and I cannot lie, he muses to himself and passes a cube of high grade to his... guest. Yes, that definition will do for now. Certainly not lover.  
  
“Drink up,” he says, saluting Breakdown with his cube. “It's not every orn I deign to share my last bit of Kaonite high grade.”  
  
Breakdown gives the cube a tentative whiff before downing the whole thing in one gulp. “Good stuff,” he says, and crushes the empty container easily, dropping the crumpled remains to the ground. “So we going to do this or what?”  
  
Luckily, Starscream isn't in this for the romance. Because Breakdown sorely lacks in the tact department.  
  
Still... “You have no talent for seduction,” Starscream laments aloud. “A shame, really, because I had heard such good things.” He turns back toward the barrel, thinking another cube or three is just the thing needed to grease Breakdown's axle. So to speak.  
  
“Don't need seduction,” the grounder says, his deep voice an interesting rumble that continues to do untoward things to Starscream's innards. “We both know why I'm here.”  
  
“Yes, well, your tact leaves much to be desired.” Starscream pours two more cubes and picks them up. He shifts his weight, turning toward Breakdown, only to startle as an arm surrounds him, fingers locking around the wrist of his hand and nearly engulfing it. A warm frame presses against him from behind, engine rumbling against his afterburner.  
  
How had the oaf moved so quickly and quietly?  
  
Breakdown's other hand rests on his hip, a hot and heavy weight that nearly encircles Starscream's waist. “Don't need tact either,” the grounder rumbles, tilting forward a fraction to exvent warm air across the back of Starscream's helm.  
  
He shivers, circuits thrumming with anticipation. “I noticed.”  
  
Breakdown chuckles, fingers of one hand squeezing Starscream's wrist as his other hand does interesting things to the gap at Starscream's hip, finding sensitive wires and playing with them. “You should drink your energon,” he says, mouth tracing the side of Starscream's helm, finding a defenseless audial. “Wouldn't want to waste it.”  
  
His thumb tracks down Starscream's lower spinal strut, clicking over each overlapping plate. Heat pours through Starscream's systems, his cooling fans clicking on with a quiet whirr.  
  
“No,” Starscream replies, static lacing his words. “We wouldn't.” He pulls his free hand to his mouth, tipping the cube up so that the smooth energon pours into his intake. His circuits are tingling, enticed by the deliberate _push_ of Breakdown's energy field.  
  
The grounder chuckles again, and grinds against Starscream's dorsal plating, pushing him against the table. His entire frame jerks, and the hand gripped by Breakdown twitches. Energon splashes out of the cube, dripping over his fingers and down his hand.  
  
“Oops.” Breakdown doesn't sound the least bit contrite.  
  
A knee inserts itself between Starscream's legs from behind, until he can't twitch without feeling his plating scrape against Breakdown's. Large fingers dance a deliberate pattern across Starscream's ventral armor, and a shudder races through his entire frame.  
  
“Don't worry,” the grounder continues in a tone he had to have learned from Knock Out considering the layers of insincerity. “I'll get that for you.”  
  
He pulls Starscream's hand up and back, leaning over the aerial's shoulder, exventing over Starscream's energon-wet hand. Starscream turns his head, watching with hungry optics as Breakdown draws the trapped wrist toward his mouth, glossa slipping out to capture a drop of spilled energon.  
  
Something all too much like a moan builds in Starscream's vocalizer. Breakdown's glossa is agile, determined, as it traces lines all over Starscream's wrist and hand, seeking every last drop of energon. Starscream's fingers twitch, losing their grip on the cube. It clatters to the table, spilling more remnants, but he's hard pressed to care.  
  
Breakdown's other hand works its way to a wing, heavy and thick as it slides across the broad plane, igniting sensors in a fiery sweep. This time, the moan does escape and static crawls out of Starscream's inner circuitry, flashing over his plating. His spark spins in excitement, energy field pulsing _need-want-more_. His knees buckle and he slumps forward, hand slamming against the table-top, splashing across spilled energon.  
  
The grounder ex-vents a smug laugh over Starscream's wrist, his free hand wandering around to Starscream's dorsal armor, finger circling his afterburner.  
  
“You play dirty,” Starscream says, arching toward the teasing fingers, his claws scraping a thin curl of metal from the table.  
  
“I play to win,” Breakdown corrects, glossa flicking between a gap in Starscream's plating and caressing the delicate servos in his wrists.  
  
A moan escapes Starscream before he can stop it, wings flicking back and against Breakdown. It appears Knock Out had not been exaggerating about his partner's prowess.  
  
“Gonna open for me?” Breakdown asks, grinding against Starscream's dorsal plating, his hand abandoning his manipulation of Starscream's afterburner to tap against the panel concealing his interface port.  
  
If he had any shame to spare, Starscream would have been suitably embarrassed at the ease in which his panel snaps open. There's a buzzing in his circuits, sensory nodes humming with charge. Electricity licks out from beneath his armor, a bright charge in sharp contrast to his dark paint.  
  
He can hear the smirk in Breakdown's tone. “Eager much?” His finger traces the edges of the port as Starscream hears the distinct snick of Breakdown's cable emerging from wherever it is concealed.  
  
“Shut up,” Starscream snarls, though lacking his usual vitriol, and he shudders as he feels the tip of Breakdown's cable tease at his interfacing panel. A lick of charge zaps between cable and port. “Get on with it!”  
  
The audible rumble in Breakdown's engine is all the warning Starscream gets before his interfacing cable pushes into Starscream's port with a defining click.  
  
If Starscream had for once suspected that Breakdown was not as affected by their games, that suspicion is immediately washed away in a flood of searing heat that slams through their connection. Breakdown's lust is a tidal wave that builds back on itself, pouring over Starscream and drowning him under intense desire.  
  
His cooling fans roar, his entire frame seizing, back arching as pleasure makes him twitch. Makes him writhe, static spilling out from under his frame, leaping back and forth between he and Breakdown. There are no defenses against the force of the grounder's lust, no chance to regain control.  
  
He's drowning and Starscream has no intention of coming up for air.  
  
His cable snakes into the air, eager to complete the circuit, and Breakdown abandons his grip on Starscream's wrist to grasp the lonely cord. He wastes no time in plugging Starscream into his own port, and the lust building between them flares outward. Starscream groans, both claws curling strips of metal from the table now. Both he and Breakdown spill heat into the air, engines working overtime.  
  
Large hands settle on Starscream's hips, jerking him back against Breakdown. Their plating scrapes and rubs, transferring paint but also friction, wonderful friction. The link between them is a discordant push-pull of give pleasure-take pleasure before it suddenly slows to a bare trickle.  
  
Starscream helm whips around, aiming a glare at Breakdown. “The frag is your problem?” he demands, vocalizer approaching a shriek. “Don't _stop_!”  
  
Gold optics are bright with lust, unphased by Starscream's vitriolic demand. “Sure you can handle it?”  
  
A shudder wracks Starscream from helm to pede, systems screaming for stimulation, frame hovering between pleasure-pain. “Breakdown, I swear to the Allspark that if you don't--” His words clamp off on a keen as Breakdown pulses pleasure hard and fast through their connection.  
  
The grounder doesn't play coy in the slightest. He doesn't tease, isn't gentle about it, just pushes more and more ecstasy across the link. Breakdown's energy field is a swamping deluge of burning passion.  
  
Starscream's wings snap tight, circuits ablaze, charge so sharp through them that it almost hurts. His plating crawls, static leaping out from his protoform and armor and into the air. Drenched in pleasure, Starscream can't string two coherent lines of thought together, much less gather enough composure to return the pulses of sensation across the link.  
  
It doesn't matter. Breakdown takes it anyway, pulling the ecstasy out of Starscream and doubling it back. It's intense, almost too much. Starscream hisses, backstrut bowing, trapped between Breakdown's overbearing frame and the unyielding table. Perfect.  
  
Breakdown leans closer, chestplate braced against Starscream's dorsal plating, his mouth hovering near Starscream's wing. A heated ex-vent brushes over a sensor cluster before the tip of the closest wing is suddenly pinched between Breakdown's denta. Starscream's ventilations hitch, plating rattling. Heat coils deep inside of him, screeching warnings striking from all directions.  
  
Breakdown chuckles, the vibrations traveling down Starscream's wing, and then he bites down, hard enough to leave a dent. In the same moment, he pulses across the connection, harsh and relentless, an unforgiving surge of lust.  
  
Vocalizer locked in a soundless scream, Starscream's frame seizes. Overload slams through him, crackling across his circuits and burning a few of them out with a tangible wisp of smoke. His systems redline, heat a searing wave that knocks his processors out of loop. On the distant edge of his audials, he hears Breakdown roar, sheer bliss dancing back and forth across the link, before all of Starscream's systems abruptly shut down.  
  


o0o0o

  
Breakdown reboots with a groan, aching in all the right places, feeling smug down to his very core. He shifts, dragging himself off the smaller aerial and carefully disconnecting them. Starscream is insensate, still knocked out cold, systems humming as they slowly come back online.  
  
Coolant. Frag, he could use some coolant. No doubt Starscream will, too. Not that Breakdown cares or anything but there's a certain matter of self-defense here. If Starscream reboots screeching, then Breakdown wants to have something on hand to shut him up.  
  
Breakdown easily hefts the slim Seeker up, depositing Starscream onto his berth. Evidence of their tryst remains in the bite marks on Starscream's wing. Nice.  
  
Rolling his shoulders, Breakdown hunts through Starscream's quarters, sure that the aerial has to have some coolant around here somewhere. He finds a decanter tucked behind a pile of unsubmitted datapads just as he hears Starscream's systems emit the telltale noises of a mech coming online.  
  
Behind him, Starscream groans and levers himself up with a whine of gears. Breakdown chugs down several swallows of coolant for himself and turns back toward the aerial, offering the decanter before Starscream can speak.  
  
Unfocused optics stare stupidly at the coolant before Starscream takes it and chugs down the rest, right wing twitching noticeably more than the other. A stirring of heat curls lazily through Breakdown's systems. Down boy.  
  
“I'm going,” Breakdown says, turning back around to swipe the last couple of cubes that remain of Starscream's high grade. Starscream doesn't need them anyway and Knock Out will rip him a new tailpipe if he doesn't share.  
  
Starscream's vocalizer spits static at him for a moment until he has enough sense to reboot it. “Still don't like aerials?” he asks, probably aiming for snide but landing more around curiosity.  
  
Breakdown pauses at the door, glancing over his shoulder. “They're good for sharing every now and then.” He smirks, saluting Starscream with his acquired energon. “Thanks for the high grade.”  
  
He leaves to the sound of Starscream spluttering indignantly. Breakdown laughs. Sure, he'll have to keep his optic over his shoulder because Starscream can get downright vindictive when he feels he's been slighted, but it was worth it.  
  
So very worth it.  
  


****

 


End file.
